She’s witnessed parents arriving on campus with enough clothing to fill several closets and students arriving with little more than the clothes on their backs. Improbably large televisions have been shoehorned into suites, and some incoming students even have tried to sneak small animals into their rooms.
And through it all, she insists move-in day is one of her favorite days of the school year.
“We love move-in day,” Gregory said. “It’s a crazy, busy, exciting day for us. Our staff starts about 5:30 in the morning and throughout the course of the day we have 600 people moving onto campus. It’s fun for us to help them, and to meet the parents.”
This year, all but a few of the 690 residential housing spots at Stanislaus will be filled by the end of the day on Friday, Aug. 21. While past school years have seen some dorm beds go unfilled, Gregory said there is a waiting list for students seeking on-campus housing for the 2015-16 school year.
“That’s a good thing because it means we’re doing better in what we’re offering and people are staying in the dorms longer,” said Gregory, who lived in the dorms while doing undergraduate work at Northwestern College of Iowa and while attaining her master’s at Liberty University of Virginia. “We do have people who stay in the dorms for four years.”
No matter how many students move into the dorms, it’s the role of Gregory, Housing and Residential Life Director Jennifer Humphrey and other administrators and staffers to make sure everything and everybody is ready. And by everybody, that means an annual thorough training of the Resident Assistants (RAs) and Peer Academic Leaders (PALs).
The RAs arrive on campus a full month before the students, while the PALs arrive three weeks ahead. Except for weekends off and a three-day team-building camping trip, the RAs and PALs go through a full-time training schedule.
For RAs, the first week is foundational training — sessions covering leadership and teamwork skills. The second week is dedicated to the specific skills they’ll need on the job, from earning CPR certification to learning about fire safety, evacuation procedures, water safety and even active shooter training.
Both groups also go through Warrior Watch training, which provides them with the knowledge, awareness, and skills to identify and prevent high-risk behaviors that may lead to alcohol-related deaths, discrimination and harassment that can include or be a precursor to sexual violence.
Yes, the housing staff is prepared for pretty much everything well before students arrive. But even with that depth of training, move-in day often will be an emotional experience for many students, parents and staffers.
“I remember what it was like to be dropped off in Iowa,” said Gregory, who graduated from Ripon Christian High School. “I see that in the students here. They are anxious for their parents to leave, but at the same time they’re shell-shocked when it happens. It’s a very emotional time, and we get that.
“In housing, we take that part of it very serious, and that’s why we train our RAs and PALs the way we do, because we don’t want the students feeling lonely for very long. We want them to integrate quickly and find people who are a lot like them.
“It’s our priority to make the students quickly feel like they belong on this campus, and that’s why move-in day is an exciting time for us.”